The Girl from Krakow Read Online Free PDF Page A

performing abortions.”
    Contraception was one thing, abortion another. Rita wanted to signal she had no trouble with the former. “It’s hard to see how you can agree to carry out abortions. It’s against all the teachings of all the religions—ours, the Catholic church, the reformed denominations, everyone. It must be wrong.”
    “I agree, it’s difficult to reconcile oneself to it. But so far as the scruples of religion go, they won’t stop me.”
    “So, you are an atheist?” Rita’s observation was obvious, but it was also another test of the possibilities.
    “Yes, but even if I wasn’t, religion wouldn’t help me with this problem.”
    “Why not?” Suddenly she was focused on what he was saying, not what he might be signaling.
    “Here’s an argument I heard in Paris that I can’t shake. Take the prohibition of abortion. God forbids it, right? So, is that why it’s wrong, just because he forbids it? Or did God forbid abortion because it’s wrong? Which is it?”
    Rita thought she knew what was coming. Should she cut him short? No, he wouldn’t like that. At least he was talking about something interesting. It made a change from Urs. She replied, “So, wrong because forbidden by God, or forbidden by God because wrong? It’s obvious. Forbidden by God because it’s wrong.”
    Tadeusz nodded. “Right. Now, if abortion is really wrong, there must be something about it that makes it wrong, something besides the fact that God forbids it. What could that be?”
    “Well. It’s wrong. It’s killing; it’s murdering innocent lives.”
    “Rita, you haven’t answered the question. Why is it wrong? It can’t be just because God forbids it. We’ve ruled that answer out. It must be something about killing itself that makes it wrong, bad, evil.” He stopped to secure her assent. Then he continued, “That’s presumably what God has figured out about killing—what makes it wrong. That’s why he imposed the rule against it. But what is it about abortion that he’s figured out? Something about abortion itself that makes it wrong, not just God’s rule against it.”
    It was a version of a subversive argument Rita remembered from Plato, but she wasn’t going to mention it now. “So, what is the answer—what is it about abortion that makes it wrong?”
    “I don’t know. But the point is, God’s saying it’s wrong can’t be what makes it wrong. When it comes to right and wrong, we have to think for ourselves.” Tadeusz thought, Will she see the argument works just as well for “Thou shalt not commit adultery”?
    Rita rose. “Somewhere Dostoyevsky writes, ‘If God doesn’t exist, everything is permitted.’ ” She walked out of the sitting room and turned down the darkened hallway to the bedroom.
    When she came back, four or five minutes later, she was wearing a dark blue silk dressing gown, the white tassel inscribing a soft curve as she walked past Tadeusz, went to the front door, locked it, and threw the bolt. Slowly Rita turned around and walked through the apartment, methodically turning off every light in the house. In the twilight she stood, looked down at him, still in a chair, while their eyes adjusted. Crooking a finger, she led him back down the corridor to the darkened bedroom.
    He found himself sitting back on the bed, with Rita looming above him astride his legs. He could hear the rustle of the slightly stiff dressing gown as it moved over her stockings. At thigh height, the rising hem revealed garters holding stockings, then a belt, but no panties. A tuft of fur no darker than the blonde above made a triangle between the belts. She had obviously left all but the panties to be removed. Slowly he did so, unclipping each fastener from its form-fitted holder, and rolling down the hose, as she continued to hold up the gown. Now she opened the robe to reveal the belt floating loosely at her waist, the ribboned fasteners no longer moored to the stockings but black against her white